


Those She Left Behind

by TheViperQueen



Category: Fallout 3
Genre: AU, Angst, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-24
Updated: 2014-01-24
Packaged: 2018-01-09 21:44:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,694
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1151141
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheViperQueen/pseuds/TheViperQueen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In surviving the events at the Rotunda James is left to endure the one thing that no parent should ever have to experience: outliving their child.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Those She Left Behind

As James sits slumped against the thick, unyielding glass that seals off the innermost part of the Rotunda he is positive that he’s going to die. He doesn’t fight the darkness that’s steadily impeding on the edges of his vision. The loss of consciousness would be a blessing- at least then he wouldn’t have to deal with the brief, but intense pain of his body tearing itself apart at a molecular level. He is at peace in his last few moments. In the months that they had been apart his little girl had grown into a strong and kind-hearted woman that is more than capable of taking care of herself. She’s now known as the ‘Ranger of the Wastes’; the one that protects the weak and defends the innocent. Of course he doesn’t want to leave her, not when there was so much life left ahead of her, but there’s nothing to be done for it. She has a good head on her shoulders and loyal friends to help her get by. He knows his death will be hard on her, but he's positive that she’ll get better in time.

When the darkness has fully consumed his vision he allows himself to picture his Catherine’s face. Her kind eyes and easy smile serve as beacons that he’s more than willing to follow. His eyes slip close as he waits for death to reunite them once more.

x-x-x

When he wakes a few days later James is surprised and, if he’s being honest, a little disappointed. He already knows what has happened; the amount of radiation he had been exposed to only yields two results: death and ghoulification. With bleary eyes he examines the skin on the back of his hands and finds it splotched with discoloration and flaking. He takes a few moments to come to terms with this unexpected turn of events before struggling to his feet. He expects to see the bodies of Janice and that Enclave colonel, but only the former’s corpse remains. He briefly wonders if the other man is somewhere undergoing the same transformation as he is or if his subordinates removed his body from the Rotunda before turning his attention the task at hand.

He enters the code that will release him from his glass prison and, after setting a timer to reseal the room, stumbles out. He wants to bring the young scientist’s body with him so that she can receive a proper burial, but as it stands he can barely support his own weight. His joints ache and his burning muscles protest his every move, but it’s the itching that trumps it all. With his blood flow increasing as he moves the itching becomes more pronounced. It feels as if hundreds of thousands of microscopic insects are burrowing between his skin cells. He claws at his flesh, determined to rend it from his bones. The excruciating pain that shoots through his nerves at the scraping of his blunted nails is enough to make him stop.

Miserable and half delirious from pain, James stumbles down the metal stairs and out into the Memorial’s main building. The room is blessedly empty. He has no idea where the power armor clad soldiers are, nor does he care, he just wants to be gone from this place before they return. Somehow he manages to descend the ladder that leads down into the network of sewers that runs underneath the dilapidated city. The trail of decaying bodies serves as the most macabre of breadcrumbs, but he follows them nonetheless, knowing that they will lead him to the Citadel. As he draws closer to his destination he sees more and more feral ghouls amongst the corpses. This gives him pause, but he carries on, hoping that his appearance is still human enough not to draw immediate fire from the Brotherhood Knights that he’s sure to run across.

After what seems like a lifetime he finally makes it to the underground entrance of the Citadel. He almost takes a bullet, but the Journeyman's gun is knocked askew at the last moment. A familiar voice breathes his name and though it is slightly distorted by the filters of her helmet he still recognizes her. James manages to whisper her name just before his body finally fails him. The woman catches him before he hits the ground.

x-x-x

He drifts in and out of consciousness for the next two weeks. During this time he is placed in an isolated wing of the Citadel. His body had begun to produce and exude massive amounts of radiation as he continues his transformation from human to ghoul. Thanks to her cybernetic upgrades only Star Paladin Cross is able to tend to him for any extended period of time and she’s more than happy to do it. He is… _was_ … her little sister’s husband, after all.

When he finally comes back to himself James is shocked to find that he now glows a vivid yellow-green. The effect is especially brilliant in the places where his skin has worn away. He’s a glowing one now, a living conduit of radiation. The energy that flows off of him in pulses has the ticker on his Geiger counter humming at a frequency that borders on deafening and he knows there is now way he can stay at the Citadel. One particularly brave Brotherhood patrol agrees to escort him to Underword (at distance, of course) and he graciously accepts their generous offer, but he refuses to leave without knowing where his daughter is. His former sister-in-law assures him that, as far as she knows, the girl is safe. He’s willing to take her word for it until she tells him that the girl has been sent to retrieve the G.E.C.K.

He wants to run out there after her, grab her by the arm, and drag her back to the relative safety of the prewar ruins that surround him, but he knows that’s not possible. She’s long gone and his body is still too weak to give chase. The fact that she had been trained in the use of power armor in between her brief visits to his bedside gave him some comfort about the whole situation. She had prepared as best she could. He just had to trust in her abilities and believe that she would come back to him.

x-x-x

James feels utterly useless in Underworld. He thought that his medical skills would come in handy here, but ghouls rarely suffer any aliments and the few that afflict them are easily treated by the city’s doctor-slash-mayor and his nurse. Barrows still allows him to hang around his clinic and the younger ghoul knows that it’s not entirely out of the goodness of his heart. He’s an oddity: a fully functioning, completely sane glowing one. Another man might have been offended at being viewed in part as a science project, but James too is a man of science.

He works side by side with the good Doctor, though his contributions aren’t as great as he would like. Being exposed to the Rotunda’s radiation wiped parts of his memory clean. Barrows tells him that this is common in glowing ones and assures him that any knowledge he lost can easily be relearned. He asks if the holes that plague his personal memories will ever be restored. The look of pity in the older man’s cloudy eyes tells him all he needs to know.

Every day he reads through the books in the city’s meager library and listens to various holo-disks in hopes that it will trigger even a vague recollection. Sometimes this works, but most days the exercise only serves to cause him grief. But he refuses to let himself mourn the memories; he knows that as soon as he sees his little girl all of the missing pieces will fall back into place. He just needs to wait.

And so he does.

Days soon melt into weeks and James grows restless. He often ventures out into the Mall to ask the still patrolling Knights if they have any news on his child. They rarely do, but they’re always quick to reassure him with phrases like _‘She’s a tough girl’_ or _‘If the Enclave’s finest couldn’t take her down, this dusty Wasteland doesn’t have a chance in hell’_ , though with each passing day he can see their own conviction wavering.

x-x-x

It’s almost two months later when the sound of bombs echo through the Mall. Looking into the faces of Underworld’s oldest inhabitants James can almost imagine the play of fire and mushroom clouds on the old world’s horizon. Carol takes it the hardest. Her sobs can just be heard through the door of the utility closet that she had locked herself in. Even after Greta coaxes her out of the cramped room she is inconsolable. Her sniffling cries are a grim reminder of horrors long pasted.

While most of the ghouls are more than content to stay inside and ride out whatever hellfire the earth had called down on itself this time, the braver ones (or, depending on who you asked, the stupid ones) rush outside to see exactly what is going on. The iron giant that looms in the distance comes as a shock to the others, but James recognizes it instantly. The Brotherhood had been working at bringing Liberty Prime online since before his daughter was born. He had never thought that they would succeed in their endeavor -even with all of their technology the military coding on the bot was no easy nut to crack- but obviously he was wrong. They watch as the giant steadily makes its way towards the Jefferson Memorial- towards his _Purifier_.

His heart soars. If the Brotherhood is marching on the Memorial then that had to mean that they had the G.E.C.K. in their possession and that meant that his little girl was safe.

The ghouls all took turns watching the robot’s progression through a couple of pairs of worn binoculars. The Enclave throws everything in their arsenal at Liberty Prime, but their efforts are in vain. Not even Vertibrids dropping Mini-Nukes can slow the thing down. It’s only when the robot holds its position at what they assume to be the Memorial’s entrance that they turn in.

x-x-x

In the following days James eagerly awaits his daughter’s return. He keeps the radio tuned into GNR in hopes of hearing even the briefest, most obscure mention of her welfare, but Three Dog’s reports are all centered around the Brotherhood’s victory over their foes. It was almost as if he was purposely avoiding talking about the girl.

On the third day he begins to worry. She could have injured in the battle or- well he never allows himself to entertain the other option.

When the sixth day comes and his daughter still hasn’t show up James packs a bag and heads for the city’s heavy doors. Willow is able to talk him out of traveling to the Citadel. Even though the Enclave had been defeated, they were still at large. They had set up ambush points all over the Wasteland in one last desperate effort to stake some sort of claim on the area. The Brotherhood was slowly eradicating the remaining forces, but given the losses that they had sustained it was slow going. The ghoulette tells him all of this in her usual slow, almost condescending manner. “Do you want to go out there and get yourself killed before she can get to you?” she asks, knowing her question will cement her appeal.

And so James waits yet again.

It’s almost three months later when Charon and an unusually calm super mutant named Fawkes come to Underworld. James had rushed out to greet them, but his steps falter as he draws nearer. The bodyguard doesn’t try to ease the blow at all as he hands the man a soot-stained locket. Gasps, pained mummers, and even a few sobs escape the ghouls that had come to gather around the trio. They all know what that little heart-shaped piece of metal means.

“We would have arrived sooner, but the Star Paladin insisted that we say nothing until we knew for certain,” the super mutant says, his booming voice as gentle as he can make it. “Locating her body took well over two weeks and eliminating the enemy so that we could do so took longer still. I am so, so sorry for your loss, sir. I did not have the pleasure of knowing your daughter for long, but I do know that she was a woman deserving of all of our honor and respect. She died so that this city could have a chance to thrive once more. I know that my words ring hollow now, but I hope that you can take comfort from them in time.” Fawkes’ shoulders are sagging with grief by the time he finishes speaking.

“She was a good woman,” Charon says and James is pretty sure it’s the longest sentence the red haired man has ever said to him. “I’m sorry for your loss. The world’s a lesser place without her in it.”

James had remained silent through it all, though tears did flow freely from his now milky eyes. “Take me to her,” he manages after a moment. “Take me to my little girl.”

x-x-x

After clearing out the debris and wrecked vehicles, the Brotherhood immediately started on erecting a monument the Mall’s Reflecting Pool. A few weeks later and the large, metal patchwork dove is done. Two weeks after that a memorial service is held in honor of the woman known as the Lone Wanderer.

People from all over the Capitol Wasteland show up to pay their respects. Some bare gifts, others bring only their words. Many people share their stories of how his daughter had touched their lives. Some of the faces are familiar to James, but many are not. Young and old, mutant and human, they all have nothing but positive things to say about his little girl.

James watches it all from a safe distance. Even on a good day he cannot always control the surges in his radiation output and today, obviously, is not a good day. More often than not he finds himself brushing tears away from his corroding cheeks as another person speaks of the departed with fondness and sorrow in equal measures. The sun is hanging low in the sky by the time the service ends. People offer him their condolences before heading off to wherever they plan on laying their head that night.

It is when the last lingering vestiges of twilight start to give way to dusk that James kneels down at the foot of the pool. “Hello, sweetheart. I- I don’t know if you can hear me wherever you are, but I like to think that you can. I would say that if it were possible to trade places with you, I would, but I know you wouldn’t like that.” He lets out a humorless laugh. “This is the opposite of everything I ever wanted for you. You were supposed to live on happy and safe in the Vault… Ah, but there’s no point in dwelling on things long pasted. You’re mother taught me that. Is she out there with you, sweetie? The world is definitely a darker place without you two here to help brighten it.”

James’ back bows under the weight of his misery and he lets out a choked sob. “ _God_ , but I miss you both terribly. I wish I could join you, but I can’t- not just yet. I have to believe that there’s a reason that I was spared, a reason that I’m still here while you’re both gone. I’m not entirely sure what it is yet, but I plan on living as best I can until I can fulfill my purpose. It’s the least I can do to honor your memories.” 

His thumb brushes over the tiny locket in his hand and tries to find solace in the fact that his little wanderer has finally found peace.

**Author's Note:**

>  **Other Places This Story Can Be Found:**  
>  _Fallout Kmeme:_ http://falloutkinkmeme.livejournal.com/5646.html?thread=11953934t11953934


End file.
